He had stepped into a soft earth, damp with cold dew, but clear and empty, a road leading somewhere, when he heard a sound behind him, a rustling as of heavy skis dragged through the mud. The White man was following him. He was leaning on a piece of stick and his feet walked without leaving the ground. Andrei stopped and waited for him. The man’s lips parted and it was a smile. He said: “May I follow you, brother? I’m not very ... steady to find my own direction.”
Andrei said: “You and I aren’t going the same way, buddy. When we find men — it will be the end for either you or me.”
“We’ll take a chance,” said the man.
“We’ll take a chance,” said Andrei.
So they walked together toward the sunrise. High banks guarded the road, and shadows of dry bushes hung motionless over their heads, with thin branches like a skeleton’s fingers spread wide apart, webbed by the fog. Roots wound across the road and their four feet crossed them slowly, with a silent effort. Ahead of them, the sky was burning the fog. There was a rosy shadow over Andrei’s forehead; on his left temple little beads of sweat were transparent as glass; on his right temple the beads were red. The other man breathed as if he were rattling dice deep inside his chest.
“As long as one can walk — ” said Andrei.
“ — one walks,” finished the man.
Their eyes met as if to hold each other up.
Little red drops followed their steps in the soft, damp earth — on the right side of the road and on the left.
Then, the man fell. Andrei stopped. The man said: “Go on.”
Andrei threw the man’s arm over his shoulder and went on, staggering a little under the load.
The man said: “You’re a fool.”
“One doesn’t leave a good soldier, no matter what color he’s wearing,” said Andrei.
The man said: “If it’s my comrades that we come upon — I’ll see that they go easy on you.”
“I’ll see that you get off with a prison hospital and a good bed — if it’s mine,” said Andrei.
Then, Andrei walked carefully, because he could not allow himself to fall with his burden. And he listened attentively to the heart beating feebly against his back.
The fog was gone and the sky blazed like a huge furnace where gold was not melted into liquid, but into burning air. Against the gold, they saw the piled black boxes of a village far away. A long pole among the boxes pointed straight at a sky green and fresh, as if washed clean with someone’s huge mop in the night. There was a flag on the pole and it beat in the morning wind like a little black wing against the sunrise. And Andrei’s eyes and the tearless eyes on his shoulder looked fixedly at the little flag, with the same question. But they were still too far away.
When they saw the color of the flag, Andrei stopped and put the man down cautiously and stretched his arms to rest and in greeting. The flag was red.
The man said strangely: “Leave me here.”
“Don’t be afraid,” said Andrei, “we’re not so hard on fellow soldiers.”
“No,” said the man, “not on fellow soldiers.”
Then Andrei saw a torn coat sleeve hanging at the man’s belt and on the sleeve the epaulet of a captain.
“If you have pity,” said the man, “leave me here.”
But Andrei had brushed the man’s sticky hair off his forehead and was looking attentively, for the first time, at a young, indomitable face he had seen in photographs.
“No,” said Andrei, very slowly, “I can’t do that, Captain Karsavin.”
“I’m sure to die here,” said the captain.
“One doesn’t take chances,” said Andrei, “with enemies like you.”
“No,” said the captain, “one doesn’t.”
He propped himself up on one hand, and his forehead, thrown back, was very white. He was looking at the dawn.
He said: “When I was young, I always wanted to see a sunrise. But Mother never let me go out so early. She was afraid I’d catch a cold.”
“I’ll let you rest for a while,” said Andrei.
“If you have pity,” said Captain Karsavin, “you’ll shoot me.”
“No,” said Andrei, “I can’t.”
Then they were silent.
“Are you a man?” asked Captain Karsavin.
“What do you want?” asked Andrei.
The captain said: “Your gun.”
Andrei looked straight into the dark, calm eyes and extended his hand. The captain shook it. When he took his hand out of the captain’s, Andrei left his gun in it.
Then he straightened his shoulders and walked toward the village. When he heard the shot, he did not turn. He walked steadily, his head high, his eyes on the red flag beating against the sunrise. Little red drops followed the steps in the soft, damp earth — on one side of the road only.
IX
“ARGOUNOV’S NAVY SOAP” WAS A FAILURE.
The unshaven bookkeeper scratched his neck, muttered something about unprincipled bourgeois competition and disappeared with the price of the three pieces he had sold.
Alexander Dimitrievitch was left with a tray full of soap and a black despair.
Galina Petrovna’s energy found their next business venture.
Their new patron had a black astrakhan hat and a high astrakhan collar. He panted after climbing four flights of stairs, produced from the mysterious depths of his vast, fur-lined coat a heavy roll of crinkling bills, counted them off, spitting on his fingers, and was always in a hurry.
“Two kinds,” he explained, “the crystals in glass tubes and the tablets in paper boxes. I furnish the materials. You — pack. Remember, eighty-seven tablets is all you have to put into a box labeled ‘One Hundred.’ Great future in saccharine.”
The gentleman in the astrakhan hat had a large staff; a net of families packing his merchandise; a net of peddlers carrying his trays on street corners; a net of smugglers miraculously procuring saccharine from far-away Berlin.
Four heads bent around the wick in the Argounov dining room and eight hands counted carefully, monotonously, despairingly: six little crystals from a bright foreign tin can into each little glass tube, eighty-seven tiny white tablets into each tiny white box. The boxes came in long sheets; they had to be cut out and folded; they bore German inscriptions in green letters — “Genuine German Saccharine”; the other side of the sheet bore the bright colors of old Russian advertisements.
“Sorry, it’s too bad about your studies, Kira,” Galina Petrovna said, “but you’ll just have to help. You have to eat, you know.”
That evening, there were only three heads and six hands around the wick: Alexander Dimitrievitch had been mobilized. There had been snow storms; snow lay deep and heavy on Petrograd’s sidewalks; a mobilization of all private traders and unemployed bourgeois had been effected for the purpose of shoveling snow. They had to report for duty at dawn; they grunted and bent in the frost, steam rising to blue noses, old woolen mittens clutching shovels, red flesh in the slits of the mittens; they worked, bending and grunting, shovels biting wearily into white walls. They were given shovels, but no pay.
Maria Petrovna came to visit. She unrolled yards of scarfs from around her neck, shaking snow off her felt boots in the anteroom, coughing.
“No, no, Marussia,” Galina Petrovna protested. “Thanks, but you can’t help. The powder’ll make you cough. Sit by the stove. Get yourself warm.”
“... seventy-four, seventy-five, seventy-six ... What news, Aunt Marussia?” Lydia asked.